The iconic Ed Sullivan Theater marquee lights up and Stephen Colbert takes the stage one last time for the final broadcast of “The Late Show” Thursday night, before the curtain comes down on more than 30 years of late-night TV history.
In the days counting down to the franchise finale, a stream of prominent guests and fellow late-night hosts took their place in the seat beside Colbert to share stories, laughs and some emotional moments.
Actor Tom Hanks gifted him a typewriter. “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart brought something to help him relax: two massage chairs and a surprise serenade from Andra Day.
Colbert and David Letterman, the show’s host when it debuted in 1993, hurled furniture from the set off the roof of the theater — a nod to one of Letterman’s classic stunts, accompanied by some choice words for the corporate bosses.
“You folks wouldn’t be in the theater if it weren’t for me, and Stephen wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, and we rebuilt this theater, and then Stephen came in and look at this, it’s like the Bellagio,” Letterman said on the show last week. “As we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice.”
David Byrne joined the show on Tuesday and he and Colbert, in matching blue suits, performed the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House.”
Bruce Springsteen, in the midst of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour, made a guest appearance on Wednesday.
The guests for Thursday’s finale were not revealed in advance.
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CBS announced back in July that it would end “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and retire “The Late Show” franchise at the end of this season. The company said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
That explanation was met with skepticism from some viewers and media critics who suspected political motives, as Colbert has been an outspoken critic of President Trump.
“You have maintained such grace through this process,” Stewart said on the show this week. Fellow late-night host Jimmy Fallon, of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” said,”I think it’s odd the way it ended for you. And it’s a bummer because I wanted to do this longer with you.”
Last week, Colbert was joined by a lineup of Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — a reunion of “Strike Force Five,” the podcast the five hosts created when their shows went off the air during the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023.
“You guys have been wonderful friends and great models for me, and I’m so glad to know and love all of you,” Colbert told them.
In recognition of Colbert’s final show, Kimmel and Fallon both planned to air reruns on Thursday.
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Colbert, who is 62, took over as host of “The Late Show” in September 2015 after Letterman retired from the role he’d held for 22 years.
Before “The Late Show,” he spent nine years hosting “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central and had been a fan-favorite correspondent on “The Daily Show” under Stewart.
Colbert developed his own distinctive style behind the desk at the Ed Sullivan Theater, balancing humor, political satire and thoughtful interviews.
Back when the franchise first launched, Letterman told “CBS This Morning,” “It’s me in a suit with peculiar-looking hair, depending on the humidity, and we just try to do an amusing, silly, entertaining show.”
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After Colbert took over, “The Late Show” became more known for its political bent and commentary on current events.
Along with its celebrities and musical guests, the show gave viewers a more personal look at Colbert himself, who was also known to weave his devout Catholic faith into his monologues and interviews, even saying he wanted Pope Leo XIV to be a guest on the show before it ended.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” had been the No. 1 program in late night for nine consecutive seasons, CBS said last year. In September, it won the Emmy for outstanding talk series and received a standing ovation from the Emmys crowd.
“I want to thank CBS for giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re no longer doing this show,” Colbert said in accepting the award.
CBS announced last month that Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” will replace Colbert’s show in the 11:35 p.m. ET time slot.
Allen told “CBS Mornings” Wednesday that the cancellation of “The Late Show” was a “very unfortunate event” and said he will try to hold onto the late-night audience.
“I love Stephen Colbert. I’m a big fan,” Allen said.
When Colbert came on stage and broke the news of the show’s cancellation to his audience in July, he said, “I’ve had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years.”
“It is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it,” he said.
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More recently, Colbert told People magazine in an interview that he tried to “never take for granted filming in the Ed Sullivan Broadway theater, having that tremendous audience or having the ability to work with the funniest people I know every day and make jokes about the things that make me most anxious.”
“You can’t do this forever. … Who knows, maybe CBS saved my life,” Colbert told People. “Because it takes a lot of bone marrow to do the show every day, and now I’ll be stepping down with enough time, enough energy to do other things that I want to do.”
Celebrity guests have been reflecting on what the show’s ending means to them, with Hanks saying, “I don’t know how the entertainment industrial complex is going to survive without you.”
“Thank you so much for holding the space for laughter,” Oprah Winfrey told Colbert before turning to the crowd during an episode last month. “Has he not held the space for laughter for us in our lives and been there for us?”